It’s Still Unstable After the Swiss Avalanche
Can there be only one? The desperate takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS may fend off a crisis, only to push banks further toward natural monopolies.
Now just one: Axel Lehmann of Credit Suisse and Colm Kelleher of UBS.
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Switzerland is a famously distributed country, with each mountain redoubt guarding its independence. Its banking system has traditionally been like that too. But, it seems, no longer. There are still plenty of small cantonal banks serving local communities, and a few international private banks catering to the wealthy. But this week’s desperation move to engineer the acquisition of Credit Suisse Group AG by UBS Group AG (itself formed by the mega-merger of Union Bank of Switzerland and Swiss Bank Corp. 25 years ago) leaves the nation with just one universal bank.